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American Horror Story: My Roanoke Nightmare Chapter 8 Review

Going into this episode I’d heard people say that it was the scariest episode they’d seen in a long time, possibly ever, and a lot of people were worried they wouldn’t sleep after seeing it. I can say personally I didn’t get that, but I can see why people would.

I’m going to keep this review short and talk about the things that were different this episode (compared to the season so far) and/or particularly well done:

The sudden influx of the ghost characters. I can’t decide if this is good or not. In the tunnels, while Dominic and Shelby were trying to escape, when the ghostly figures first started to appear it was genuinely creepy and a little frightening, but then when Dominic and Shelby were being chased through the house by multiple ones it felt a bit much at times. There were so many moments that it came so close to being terrifying, but it never quite got there. Saying that I probably would have died before I got out of the tunnel.

Shelby committing suicide wasn’t too surprising, she did seem genuinely torn about killing Matt, and with him being dead and the only reason she came back, it’s understandable that she would feel like she hasn’t got a reason to survive this time. It was a shame really, she was really starting to grow on me!

Lee coming to the rescue! I was so convinced that she would be the one to die, but she managed to get herself out the situation along with Audrey. Seeing the two of them interact through the episode was really great. It definitely seems like an alliance has been made, however, we do know only one person survives, so there’s still time for one of them to turn on the other, but hopefully they don’t.

Wes Bentley! I’ve been waiting for him to show up again and he finally did. Clearly Sidney had paid some of the actors to pretend to be the ghosts and scare those inside the house (or to deliberately do things to stir up drama like Dominic was supposed to do), but it begs the question, why did Wes’ character (Dylan) only show then? Had he been around longer?

All of that being said the episode was just like the others, however it did step up its game in terms of creepiness, violence, and out-right making things uncomfortable. With only two episodes left of the season it can only get darker because there are still a lot of characters to kill off, and there’s some yet to be introduced. Here’s the thing though, just because it said one person survived, does that mean one person who was in the house at first (and was credited for the second show)? Or does that also include people who randomly show up like Dylan or the other characters we’re waiting on?